Impressionism with a modern
twist, this is a way of describing the work of Martina Nehrling, who
makes her mark with bright bands of acrylic.
“My paintings are visual rhythms inspired by the cacophony of daily
life, at once the weight and the flimsiness of it. Compelled by the
pulsation of the beautiful and horrific relentlessly clashing I create
compositions of accumulation. Grouped or tangled together, I use
multiple distinct brushstrokes for their graphic directness, but
highly saturated chroma in order to heighten the effect of color’s
imprecise language. I am utterly seduced by the formal complexity of
color while I revel in its emotive slipperiness and enjoy mining its
controversial decorativeness. The inextricability of these aspects
unique to color, continually spurs my engagement. Additionally, color
is significant to a striking auditory experience during my painting
process. To develop the tenor, tonality and rhythm of a piece I listen
to the spatial relationships and interrelation of color, often
combining both sonorous and percussive qualities. I use particular
color relationships to interrupt or punctuate the tracking of patterns
of value and intensity, creating moments of concord and discord,
taking pleasure in syncopation and visual rhyming. With color that
refuses to be ignored in patterns akin to lists, sentences or notes,
my paintings operate as lyrical musing, lush celebration, high pitched
lament or raucous rebellion”.

Martina Nehrling at Zg Galleryby Robin Dluzen

Zg Gallery is
hosting an exhibition of new acrylic paintings by Martina Nehrling. On
display are works that continue the manner of uniform, multi-color
mark-making that Nehrling has employed for quite some time:
controlled, single-colored brushstrokes that are roughly four times as
long as they are wide. When one's marks never change, and the palette
is open to any and all vivid colors offered by the range of acrylics,
how is it possible that the paintings can continue to broach new
territory? Happily, Nehrling's new paintings are proof that it's
absolutely possible.

The large
scale paintings in the exhibition are like fields of multi-color,
harnessing the mark-making for rhythmic, sweeping landscapes. Here,
the marks are small parts of an illusionistic whole; truly in how
mark-making generally operates, in the large paintings Nehrling's
marks are a means contributing to a larger end. The paintings like
Garden Drunk (four feet by twelve feet), are something to behold, and
to awe, in a Pollock-ian manner. Or perhaps, more accurately, they are
more like the sweeping all-overness of Pollock, executed with the
color compiling of Pointillism, where up close, the hues are
individual, but from a distance, they combine and interact in an
optical experience.

But of the works in this exhibition, the small paintings bring viewers
in close; though they use the very same marks as their larger
counterparts, their scale makes them a separate experience, as if they
are made with a wholly different painting language. Mainly, the
difference is a compositional one: instead of the marks being parts of
a whole as they are in the large scale, on these little canvases the
forms are shapes, rather than mere marks. They are no longer what
renders the whole subject, but are themselves individually so, where
the drips and the tiniest inconsistencies are now to be part of the
content, rather than solely happy accidents of process. For example,
in Nehrling's 16" by 10," untitled work, the white ground prompts the
little rectangles to converse with one another. Pastels stacked upon
each other are peppered with saturated blues and browns; the
horizontal pile of shapes that dominates the canvas is precariously
"supported" by a handful of vertical ones along the bottom of the
picture plane. This work even embodies a sense of time; an order of
application can be deduced by the drips that overlap the marks made
before them.
Both the large and small paintings are powerful, and I believe that
their proximity to each other and their existence simultaneously in a
practice strengthen them both through contrast; the large paintings
are supremely optical, while the smaller paintings are more narrative,
or even intellectual. And I think that this exploration in scale is
what helps sustain this practice of such uniformity.

Artists Connect
Lecture Series:Martina Nehrling makes complex, colorful paintings that
seem to pulse with an interior rhythm. Describing her process, she
said, "When I paint I am sounding out elements of my everyday
life, and I am captivated by the richly textured cacophony of
disparate events, information, things.... My paintings are not
about just anything, rather they are about everything—at once the
beauty, the horror, the weight of daily life." For this Artists
Connect lecture, Nehrling discusses her own work and the
inspiration she finds in the work of Édouard Vuillard, a
Post-Impressionist chronicler of the everyday.

Standing in front of her gigantic, panoramic “Through a Purple Patch"
artist Martina Nehrling ponders on how to describe her work and how it
comes to be. She notes the experiential quality of the titular piece
of her new exhibition opening tonight, spanning 21 feet across the
south wall of the Zg Gallery, three canvases combined. Stretched so
far as to fit on her studio wall with two inches to spare, the
painting stood sentry as she created the other works of the
exhibition, eight in all.

The
triune "Purple Patch" is perhaps the capstone of her last year of
work.” Purple Patch" is partly an homage to Monet and his "Water
Lilies" a series that deeply resonated with Nehrling, one that she
sought out at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York. She felt an affinity with the Impressionist
master in his later period, as his brushwork grew more self-evident.
Nehrling's stroke is incredibly prominent in her wonderfully chaotic
work. Her colors bounce around the on-canvas tumult, reds and green
rising out of blues and oranges -- a diffuse, dynamic and interactive
event.

"It's a reflection of my part of the world, the busy urban setting,
the routine of over stimulus" she says. Nehrling, quick to add,
"that's just my personal take, I can't speak for everyone" is a young,
growing artist with an idiosyncratic style.

Nehrling
describes the first (chronological) piece of the show as having three
layers of shape: first the discrete form, like a shadow of an ice
cream cone; and then the under-paint, loose geometrics within the
discrete; and finally her signature staccato stroke populating the
painting, alternately cacophony and symphony. - Drake